32 Diggs' disposition, whIch was dead set against psychoanalysis. Mrs. Martin set the tall, frothy choc- olate drink down on Miss Diggs' table, where Miss Diggs was seated doing sums for pleasure. "What du you think about that Miss Alexander?" Miss Diggs asked, laying down her pencil. Mrs. Martin made a circling motion close to her temple wIth her forefinger, and rolled her eyes. Miss Diggs looked away, self-con- sciously. She, like the other patIents, had only too often heard Mrs. Martin's loud pronouncements that they were an as n u tt} as fruitcakes. "She's merely neurotic, of course," Miss DIggs went on hastily. "Very neu- rotIc, perhaps. But what I meant was about her progress. I don't kno"\v any- thing about artists," she said confidently, "but would you say she is getting well? " Mrs. I\ilartin shook her head fore- bodingly. "I would not," she said. "She was better off when she first came. I liked her the way she was then-not a thing wrong with her but heing quiet as a mouse and scared pink. Now she's forever soundIng off like a real loon). It's my belief the Doctor's made a fail- ure of her case." Miss Diggs fiddled with her pencil. "Has it occurred to you," she asked, "that the Doctor is slipping?" Mrs Martin's eyes gleamed. She dearly loved to discuss disaster. "He's getting old. Things escape his notice. He'd never have let Miss Alexander go spouting nonsense in the old days. I can hear him now, clamping down on the gab. NothIng got past hIm. Nowadays all the re- sponsibility falls on my shoul- ders," Mrs. :vIartin added, looking put-upon. "When he goes," ::\1iss Diggs said, "I shall move to the vIllage This part of the country suits me." "Personally, I plan to reside in Far Rockaway," Mrs Martin said. "I have a little nest egg put away." But she looked nearly as wretched as Miss Diggs did. When she had gone, Miss Diggs got up and poured her milk shake out of the window, carefully, so as not to splash chocolate on the white clapboards. It was made of unpasteurized milk from the Hardpan Farm COWS'f and :vIiss DIggs had never been in any doubt about what was really the matter with her: she had undulant fever. I N front of the open door to the porch off Miss t\.lexander's room, the Doctor and his patient sat 1n a flood of July afternoon sunshine. Miss Alexan- der's notebook, in which nowadays she recorded her dreams, lay open on her lap. Last night she had dreamed that her father, who in realit) worked in a bank, was teaching Prussian military drill at ColumbIa. The analysis of the dream had led to another of the Doc- tor's interminable reminiscences about a patient-Miss Hughes, this time. Miss Alexander fidgeted. She had something she wanted to say, herself, about Miss Hughes. "She likes me," she announced as soon as he had wound up his tedious ac- count of the day Miss Hughes had gone for a walk in the woods and realized she wanted to live. "They all like me." The Doctor looked pleased. "Of course they like you," he saId. "Why shouldn't they?" "But what does it mean?" Miss Alexander asked studiously. "What is the significance of their liking me?" "It doesn't mean anything." Outraged and betrayed, Miss Alex- ander cried, "But you said everything meant somethIng!" "And nothing means anything," the Doctor replIed, unperturbed. "They like you because you're likable. Isn't that enough for you? " "No," said Miss Alexander. """,\Then something functions, we leave it alone," he said. "We don't go to work and destroy it." A light came into Miss Alexander's eyes. "All destruction bears withIn itself the seed of creation," she announced. She had made the discovery at two-forty-five that morning. "True, true," the Doctor agreed wearily. "This dynamic is essential to any step toward individua- tion," Miss Alexander pro- ceeded enthusiastically. "For despite the feelIngs of superiority experienced by the artist, he is in reality unstable, neu- rotic, and displays erratic conduct, emo- tional stress, and irrational reactions. His vaunted art productions are actually surrogates for the ego development he has failed to achieve." "That's the picture," said the Doc- tor, yawnIng. "The integrated personality is one in which thought and feeling are fused in a harmonious whole," she went on. "Thought serving the ego, and feeling being in right relation to reality. Even withIn the childish and inferior elements of the personality the principle of growth is contained, the unstable portIon thus potentially capable of nourishing the more mature part ThIs constitutes true creativity. Doesn't it?" "Yep," the Doctor said. He took off his spectacles and held them off to look for spots; then he took out his clean white pocket handkerchief, breathed on the lenses, and rubbed them clean. "Is the professor's daily lecture over?" he inquired with mild irony. "Y ou like to philosophize," she point- ed out, hurt. "I don't think you under- stood what I was expressing." It oc- curred to her that he might be jealous. "I know all about it," declared the Doctor. "What's the matter wIth what I said?" she insisted. "J ust it sounds lIke a couple of other people; introverts, I'd say. When are you going to give me somethIng of your own? l' "It is my own!" she protested. "1 thought it all out myself." "Pish," said the Doctor. "You can't think, my dear chIld. Not worth a hoot. " Miss Alexander looked down at her notebook. "I'll just have to try harder," she saId. "And 1 thought 1 was doing so well. " The Doctor sighed. There was a pause. "What a petty oppressor your father was," he observed. "Your poor mother seems never to have asserted herself." Obediently, Miss Alexander turned back to her dream. At the end of the hour, the Doctor trotted awa} down the corridor to his next appointment, and Miss Alexander returned to the volume she had laid down at the Doctor's entrance, a work entitled "The Libidinous Content of the Pre-Conscious," which she found unin- telligible but intensely gratifying. Miss Hughes put her head in at the door. "Come and go berrying under the trees," she said. I N the grateful shade of the overhang- ing beeches and maples, the patients picked the raspberries that had rIpened at the end of the kitchen garden. W ear- ing their oldest faded cotton dresses, they bent or knelt-MISs Hughes and Miss Alexander and Mrs. Gleason and, when she was temporarily free of symp- toms, Miss Diggs-and plucked the soft, crImson, furry fruit. Against the strong July light the canes of the rasp- berries made tall, curving sweeps, marked by long thorns, upon which the patients sometimes stuck themselves. Through the screen of canes they could see the rest of the big garden lying warm and brown and fruitive under the sun: